Existing comment:
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851)
Herman Melville's tale of the Great White Whale and the crazed Captain Ahab who declares he will chase him "round perdition's flames before I give him up" has become an American myth. Even people who have never read Moby-Dick know the basic plot, and references to it are common in other works of American literature and in popular culture, such as in the film the Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). |